On Location, Oscars Edition: Seeing the Heart of San Francisco in Blue Jasmine

The scenery is just as dramatic as the plot in the San Francisco-based, Oscar-nominated film, Blue Jasmine.

Blue Jasmine tells the story of two estranged sisters: down-to-earth Ginger (Sally Hawkins), a divorcee and mother of two who works hard for her family, and upper-class Jasmine (Cate Blanchett), who shows up on her sister’s unfashionable doorstep, looking for a place to stay while she puts her life back together following her scheming husband’s arrest and suicide. Her plan only really consists of landing another wealthy husband, and she believes she has found her match in Dwight Westlake (Peter Sarsgaard), a well-to-do aspiring politician who has just purchased an amazing San Francisco Bayfront house in Tiburon (which really does happen to be on the market).

Back in the real world, Jasmine is (at least for the moment) stuck living with her sister in San Francisco’s Mission District. “It is a very small apartment,” says Moody, whose résumé includes more than two dozen film and television projects, including The Matrix Reloaded, Milk, and the new HBO series Looking. “Most of us had to stay outside or hang out in the ground floor vacant space, which we used for staging equipment and craft service. It was a former punk record store and is now a hip wine bar.”

“This was a very last minute shot,” says Moody of Jasmine and Ginger’s double date with Chili (Bobby Cannavale) and Eddie (Max Casella). “I had to rush over to Chinatown to secure parking. Whenever I would place a ‘No Parking’ barricade in the street, a Chinese woman would put it back on the curb. I think we ended up with a lot of tourists as extras.”

The foursome also makes their way to The Ramp, a popular, no-frills restaurant that boasts some of the city’s best water views and has been serving up old-school seafood dishes since 1950.

“Woody spent a lot of time outside and autographed a baseball for a fan there,” says Moody of the apartment set at 305 South Van Ness Avenue, who notes that part of the reason it was chosen was because “Woody wanted an exterior without trees, because it was sadder.”